Chapter Three
H is look of relief could have been seen for miles out at sea, or so Anna imagined.
‘Bless your heart, Miss Fontaine,’ he said. The words were quietly spoken, but she felt his sincerity in her soul. ‘I do not know how long this will last. I must leave tomorrow. I will have a better idea when I return.’
‘No matter,’ she said. ‘You and your son may have my brother’s room, though I will warn you that the bed is not a large one.’
‘I am used to small spaces.’ She thought he smiled then, but it was hard to say, because he was looking down and not at her. ‘If you can assure me that the bed will not pitch or yaw, we will manage tolerably.’
It was a smile, albeit a small one. She took heart and smiled back, wiping away any grief she felt at the prospect of opening the door to Will’s room for someone else.
Will had told her in letters that the Old Man—that nickname given to all captains—was firm but kind.
In Will’s memory, she knew she must repay that kindness.
‘I’ll show you to his room.’
‘Thank you,’ he said simply, then seemed to reconsider. ‘First, may I see my child in your kitchen?’
‘Certainly.’ She sniffed the air. ‘I think Mrs Moore has been augmenting our leftover loaves and fishes.’
She rose and he followed. As she walked into the kitchen, Anna reckoned it was her first good moment in a sad day.
‘That smells good,’ the captain said as Mrs Moore looked at him from the Rumford, where she was turning over sausages.
‘Sit down, sir,’ Anna’s housekeeper said. ‘These two are full. This is for you.’
The captain sat, his lap immediately occupied by his son. Captain Beattie bowed his head over Allan and held him close.
Anna turned towards Pru. Efficient, capable and probably a spinster in the making since birth, Anna sat and opened her arms. Without any hesitation, Pru landed in her lap.
‘I tried, ma’am,’ she whispered. ‘T’old witch told me she’d be watching the house and if I left for anything, the constable would nab me and haul me away.’ She shivered, and not from cold. ‘I’ve been hauled away before.’
‘No one will haul you away,’ she declared, even as she knew she was stepping into a great unknown. ‘Allan is alive and so are you. How did you manage, Pru, when those odious women left?’
It was Pru’s turn for silence. Anna knew the captain waited for an answer, too, some explanation of what had gone so horribly wrong.
Anna wondered if anyone had ever listened to the scullery maid before.
What to say? She knew. ‘Pru, you kept both you and Allan safe for…for…two months? I think you are amazingly brave and creative.’
‘I know how to get by on nearly nothing,’ Pru replied, her hesitation replaced by something close to pride. She turned towards Allan on his father’s lap. ‘We managed, didn’t we?’
Allan nodded.
‘I wish I knew why they abandoned you two,’ Captain Beattie said. ‘I trusted them.’
‘I think I know,’ Pru said in a small voice. ‘Sir, maybe I was nosy.’
‘Hardly matters,’ the captain replied. He surprised Anna by winking at the child. You do have an instinct for children , she thought. ‘I’ve been known to snoop around when I thought something was amiss. Did you think that, too?’
Pru nodded. ‘When you’re raised in a workhouse, you get…cautious.’
‘I hear that from some of my crew,’ he said gently. ‘What was amiss?’
His question, asked with nothing except interest, nothing overt, seemed to open the floodgates. ‘They whispered together a lot, and I heard about someone named Faro. Do you know him?’
Anna gave the captain oceans of credit. He didn’t laugh.
‘I have, indeed. It’s a card game, Pru, and I’ve lost a few coins at the table, too. They gambled, then?’
‘Only Miss Driscoll, I think. She said she had some money from you.’
‘That money was to keep you fed and comfortable until I returned.’ His voice hardened as he gave Anna a side glance. ‘Two hundred pounds. Some of that was supposed to be your wages, Pru. Did you even see a penny?’
She shook her head. ‘No, sir. Miss Driscoll went out at night and when she came back…well, I heard her crying a few times.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe she wasn’t too good with Faro.’
‘I wasn’t either, so I stopped. I gather she didn’t.’
‘Miss Driscoll got angry at Pru over everything, Papa.’ Allan leaned back and looked up at his father. ‘Pru didn’t steal anything. Why was Miss Driscoll so angry that she hit Pru?’
The captain sighed.
You look so tired , Anna thought.
‘I’m sorry, Pru,’ he said.
‘It didn’t show,’ the scullery maid said, as if that was somehow allowed, which chilled Anna to her marrow. ‘I also heard them talking about jewellery. Did…? Was that…?’
‘My wife’s jewellery,’ he said, his voice dull, like an ache. He kissed the top of Allan’s head. ‘Allan’s mother’s. Oh, God.’
‘You didn’t lose that, Papa,’ Allan said. ‘I knew where you kept Mama’s pretties, and Pru hid them behind the commode in my dressing room.’
‘Pru, you’re so resourceful. You can sign on my crew any time you wish,’ Captain Beattie said approvingly.
‘Sir, I could never,’ she said softly, as though a compliment was too much. ‘You’re teasing me. I knew they wouldn’t look behind the commode because night soil is my job.’
‘Mama’s pretties weren’t anything valuable, I suppose,’ Captain Beattie said, gathering his son close, reminiscing in a way that seemed almost too intimate to Anna.
‘Before the war, and even before we married, I liked to bring Miss Cathy Fergusson baubles from my ports of call. Some necklaces, a bracelet from Ceylon, a cameo brooch from France before the situation got so nasty. Thank you, Pru. I’ll collect it tonight after you’re all in bed here. ’
‘We’re not going back there, Papa?’ Allan asked.
‘Never.’ The captain looked at Anna. ‘Miss Fontaine is letting us stay here tonight. She has agreed that you and Pru can remain here while I am in drydock in Portsmouth. Tell us what happened next, Pru, when they couldn’t find Cathy’s baubles.’
‘They left. They told us not to leave the house or say anything.’ She looked down again. ‘As if anyone would have believed us.’
‘I doubt anyone would have,’ Anna said. ‘You both could have ended up in the workhouse, with Captain Beattie none the wiser. Pru, you are my hero.’
‘And mine,’ the captain said.
Captain Beattie deposited his son back in his chair. While the children ate—Mrs Moore had brought more biscuits and their appetites seemed bottomless—he gestured towards the open door.
Anna followed.
‘I’ll return to my house and see what I can recover. Would you show me where Allan and I will sleep tonight? I know it is an imposition, but I don’t know what else to do.’
‘Never fear, sir,’ Anna said. ‘We have room. It’s a small house,’ she said at the top of the landing. ‘We’re renting it, with the rent paid quarterly.’
‘Is it time to pay?’
‘Soon,’ she replied, wondering where that would come from, now that Will was gone.
There was so much to consider. She glanced at the man beside her, and saw him not only as a captain with firm command and many lives in his hands, but also as a father with no idea what to do, beyond asking for help from a stranger.
May I never be that desperate , was her first thought, followed by, but if I am, I hope someone will help me .
‘I will leave you money to pay the lease, and also funds to cover all expenses, until I return.’ He nearly smiled. ‘Provided you don’t pawn jewellery or frequent gaming hells.’
She laughed. ‘Not in recent memory, sir.’
It gave her a pang to open the door to Will’s room. She hadn’t meant to hesitate, but she couldn’t help leaning her head against the door and taking a deep breath.
‘Death is hard, Miss Fontaine,’ he said in that matter-of-fact tone she was already recognising, no matter how short their acquaintance. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better first lieutenant than your brother.’
She couldn’t look at him, knowing she would disgrace herself with more tears. She kept her forehead against the door, liking the solidity. ‘He said the same thing about you, sir.’
‘Then we were both fortunate,’ he replied. ‘Buck up, my mate.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s what I would tell my crew. I am a plainspoken Scot, and time is moving on.’
That was all she needed. Captain Beattie was a busy man, trying to arrange the welfare of his son at short notice. He didn’t need to deal with a tearful lady. She opened the door.
She took a deep breath. There it was, Will’s favourite blanket when ashore, his books, even the sweetmeats she knew he liked, because he was coming home.
She stepped back involuntarily, unable to enter the room.
To her surprise and then her complete relief, Captain Beattie put his hands on her shoulders and steadied her.
They stood that way for a moment, then she squared her shoulders and stepped into the room under her own power. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, and meant it.
She calmly surveyed the room again, and became herself. ‘I am sorry the bed is so small, sir, but I do have another pillow.’
The captain became the captain again, too. ‘No matter. I look forward to close quarters with my son I so seldom see.’ He turned to her. ‘Miss Fontaine, I will be forever grateful to Pru for her courage.’
‘I am, too,’ Anna said. ‘We’ll find a good place for her here.’
Finding that place was easily accomplished. They came downstairs to see the children intent upon playing jackstraws, which Mrs Moore must have dredged up from somewhere in this childless house. Anna had no doubt that Pru would be looked after by her housekeeper tonight.
What now? This was her house, but something about Captain Beattie seemed to fill the place. She knew command when she saw it, and also saw a different person from the utterly distressed man who’d knocked on her door a short time ago.
‘What now, sir?’ she asked, her voice quiet in case she was wrong.
‘The hour is late. Allan, Miss Fontaine will help you prepare for bed.’ He glanced at her. ‘Would you sit with him upstairs until I return from my house?’
‘I will, sir.’
He looked next at Mrs Moore, who, it seemed to Anna, watched the whole scenario unfold, her eyes bright with interest.
‘Mrs Moore, is it? Can you find somewhere for Pru?’
Anna knew Mrs Moore was used to command, too. ‘Pru will fit quite nicely in my room. We will look after each other, sir.’
He actually smiled at that, which allowed Anna to lower her own shoulders a notch.
‘Very well, then. Miss Fontaine, I would never ask you to keep your door unlocked until I return. Do you have another key?’
She did, and gave it to him. He kissed his son, and had the supreme fatherly instinct to press his forehead to his son’s and whisper a few words only to him. ‘I won’t be long,’ he told her, and let himself out. She locked the door behind him.
Anna didn’t think she possessed any motherly instincts at all, but she had no trouble helping Allan into a nightshirt dredged up from a trunk in the attic containing Will’s clothing. She made herself comfortable above the covers beside him.
‘What should we do now?’ she asked, as she remembered Mama’s bedtime stories.
‘Tell me something about my father,’ he said eagerly, which broke her heart into small pieces, as she understood another horrible side of war: it made children and fathers strangers.
She wasn’t about to tell this trusting child that she knew nothing about his father, beyond his name and his desperate plight. She said a small prayer, small because she doubted whether the Lord had time for her needs.
Maybe she was wrong. She knew where to begin, as surely as if some Superior Being did care.
‘There isn’t a braver man in the entire Royal Navy,’ she said. ‘He and his ship…’
‘He said it’s named after a bird,’ Allan supplied, when she stopped.
‘Ah, yes, the Swallow . Your father and the Swallow are keeping us safe from enemies across the Channel.’
Should she? She did, putting her arm around him and receiving instant gratification when he snuggled close with no hesitation. In spite of all that had happened to him, she knew he was still a trusting child.
‘His duty keeps him from home and he wishes every night on…on a star that he could be here to keep you safe.’
She heard a contented sigh, then even breathing. She closed her eyes and slept, too, waking a little later to feel a hand on her shoulder, and words close to her ear.
‘Miss Fontaine, I am back and the front door is locked. You and I will be in front of Carter and Brustein at eight o’clock.’
Anna sat up, wondering for a brief moment where she was and who this was.
‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered. ‘In the morning. Goodnight, Captain Beattie.’ She smiled in the darkness. ‘He’s a warm little furnace. You’ll have no trouble sleeping.’
In her own room, Miss Anna Fontaine had no trouble either. She settled into her bed content, despite what a wrenching day it had been. Captain Beattie, keep me safe, too , she thought. And she closed her eyes.